Peterson At End Of Long Line For Ca. Death Review

By |March 17, 2005

Scott Peterson has become the 644th prisoner awaiting death in California’s San Quentin Prison execution chamber. The Associated Press reports that a counselor will review his criminal, educational, medical, and psychological histories to classify the 32-year-old former fertilizer salesman, a process that could take several weeks. San Quentin houses 5,300 other prisoners, but they don’t interact with the condemned inmates. Death row, built in 1934 and designed for 68 inmates, is actually three buildings.

A new $220 million death row has been proposed. It would hold 1,000 men and replace the current patchwork of dilapidated facilities with a modern, security conscious design. There’s no telling whether Peterson will ever recieve a lethal injection. Most deaths on death row in California happen as a result of natural causes, or at the hands of other inmates. Peterson will likely sit for more than five years before he is appointed an attorney for a mandatory appeal to the California Supreme Court. Of the 38 states with the death penalty, California moves the slowest toward executions.

The legislation marks a major change for Republicans, who long hve embraced a law-and-order rallying cry. Now many GOP senators argue for rehabilitating more offenders rather than long-time incarceration.

An Arizona doctor argues that the government should have learned from previous federal anti-drug strategies that blanket prohibition doesn’t work. He calls for scrapping attempts to curtail opioids and replacing it with “harm reduction” policies.

Expensive medications for inmates can lead to substandard care and delays in treatment, and that may have lasting—even deadly—consequences for incarcerated individuals, writes a prison health care advocate.

Murder rates in the nation’s 30 largest cities are projected to fall by nearly 6 percent this year according to the latest data, undercutting claims that the nation is experiencing a “crime wave,” says the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

School safety commission proposes ending a federal guideline telling schools not to punish minorities at higher rates. The panel largely sidestepped issues relating to guns, although it favors arming some school personnel.